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Lot essay

Publishing the present picture in 1982, loc. cit., Egidio Martini described it as an 'Opera robusta e bellissima eseguita penso tra il 1722 e il 1725, nella quale si notano dei ricordi più che del Piazzetta, di Paolo Pagani, specialmente rilevabili nei toni di colore grigio delle ombre' and considered it particularly close to the Madonna del Carmelo in the Brera (Gemin and Pedrocco, op. cit., no. 59, illustrated). Massimo Gemin and Filippo Pedrocco, to whom 'l'attribuzione a Giambattista pare indiscutibile', point out that it has an even closer affinity with the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew in the Church of San Stae, Venice (ibid., no. 43, illustrated), for which it was commissioned in May 1722, and suggest that the present painting must have been painted immediately after the completion of the altarpiece.
After seeing a transparency, Professor Pedrocco discussed the present picture in his lecture Inediti di Giambattista Tiepolo delivered at the Tiepolo convention held in Venice in October 1996, which will be published in forthcoming Acts. In this he related it also to the Heliodorus and Onias in the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, which he dates to 1724 rather than 1726-7, the dating recently proposed by Keith Christiansen (in the catalogue of the exhibition Giambattista Tiepolo, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice, 5 Sept.-9 Dec. 1996, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 24 Jan.-27 April 1997, no. 10, illustrated in colour).